So long, Miss Emma ~ January, 1999

David Heiller

Miss Emma seemed to go downhill right before our eyes. For all of her 16 years, she had been a big, healthy cat.

Even in her old age, she was robust. Her stomach fur dragged on the floor. I used to joke that we dusted our furniture by spraying End Dust on her stomach and chasing her around the house.

Miss Emma, doing the cat-gig.

She looked like a healthy old grandma, the kind that wears an apron and makes cookies and reads books to kids sitting on her lap. Emma had a big lap.

Then just like that, about three weeks ago, she looked old and frail. Her bones stuck out. She wouldn’t move or even meow when we walked by her on the dining room floor. She liked to lie in a special spot about two feet from the wood stove.

It’s just old age, I told my wife, Cindy. After all, Emma was 16 years old. That^’s the equivalent of a 76-year-old woman.

Cindy didn’t agree. She felt that something was wrong with Emma, so she took her to our veterinarian, Daina Rosen, in Moose Lake.

Daina did some tests and found out that Emma had a bad heart. Daina couldn’t even count her pulse; her heart was racing so fast. Her kidneys were barely working either.

Miss Emma in the "missing-sock-basket".
She was named Miss Emma because she had Emma-rald eyes.

Daina didn’t say we should put Emma 'to sleep', but it became obvious to us after a few days that that was the best option. We didn’t want our cat to suffer, to not be able to use a cat box or walk around the house, and she was close to that point.

We didn’t want to intervene with intravenous feeding and lots of pills, just to buy her a few months of life. Those were options that Daina presented, in a neutral way. That didn’t make sense. She’s just a cat, one side of me said.

But, what a cat. She was so patient with the kids when they were young. She welcomed them both into our house. When they got too aggres­sive with her, she would give them a little scratch. Nothing serious. Just a warning, and one that they heeded. She was like a mother in that way, which might have been an instinct that she never got to display because she was spayed.

Miss Emma and Malika in the maple tree. 
They were pals like that.

She was a great mouser. One day I woke up to find three mice laid out in front of the wood-stove, like a hunter might display the squirrels he shot. That diminished in her later years. She went into hunting retirement. That didn’t bother us. She had earned it.

She hunted outside too, but we didn’t like that, because we feed birds and it didn’t seem fair to the birds that we were fattening them up for Miss Emma. So we started keeping her inside as she got older, or when a lot of birds were at the feeder.

Emma was very cautious. That’s probably why she lived so long. It would take her a long time to warm up to a new dog in the house. She liked Binti, a dog that we had for 12 years. They were good pals. We tried getting another cat a couple times and Emma refused to have anything to do with them. We finally gave up trying, and gave in to Emma’s desire to be the sole cat.

She liked people too, although she wouldn’t be called the friendliest cat that ever lived. She was too cautious and alert for that. But she would often lay on our bed with us at night, or curl up on our stomach if we were lucky enough to catch a nap. Then it was a real cat nap.

David and Noah and Miss Emma, hanging out.

There isn’t any simpler pleasure in life than having a cat purr next to you. Even though I had bad allergies from Emma, it was worth it to have her with us.

Cindy and I talked about what to do with Emma. We called Daina back and asked a few more questions and told her that we thought we should have her put to sleep. Daina thought that was a good idea. She hadn’t wanted to say that right away. She didn’t want to influence us. But she said there was a lot of wisdom in doing that.

Daina was so gentle. I didn’t realize that vet­erinarians had a bed side manner, but she did. She understood how hard this was. She ex­plained how she would put Emma to sleep by injecting an overdose of anesthesia into her heart using a hypodermic needle. It wouldn’t hurt much, she said. That made me feel good.

We took Emma to Daina’s office on January 14. Emma lay quietly on the table. No way would she have done that when she was healthy. It was like she was resolved to her fate.

Cindy and I knelt by her and petted her when Daina put the needle through her side. Emma didn’t flinch. Her eyes stayed open, but they slowly lost their focus. Then they closed slightly. Daina checked her heart a couple times with a stethoscope, and told us when it had stopped.

We petted Miss Emma for a few minutes. I’m not ashamed to say some tears were shed. It’s hard to lose a pet. I hope I never become too hard-hearted not to feel that. It’s an honor to be present when an old friend dies.

Daina gave us a hug. She said she would keep Emma until spring, when the weather is nice and we can bury her next to Binti, our old dog and her old friend.

Doing battle with gloves and mittens ~ January 12, 1989

David Heiller

Mitten Wars Have Arrived, the tabloid headline screams. Mittens Fighting to Conquer Civilization as We Know It.

Meanwhile, back in Pine County, Minnesota...

Last Friday, as we headed out the door for the day care and Noah put on his mittens, I noticed that one was red, the other blue.

Mittens and winter and, hey, hers even match!

“You can’t wear those,” I said. “They don’t match.” There’s no surer sign of failed parenthood than when children don’t have mittens that match.

“Where are all your mittens?” I continued, looking through the shoe rack in the play room where we keep the mittens. Don’t ask why we keep mittens in a shoe rack.

“I don’t know. Maybe at day care,” Noah answered. “Maybe at Jake’s, I think.”

Noah’s friend, Jake, has a laundry basket full of hats and mittens. It’s a fine and colorful collection, and grows every time Noah visits there.

We looked through the toys on the floor of the play room, and found two mittens. They didn’t match the ones on Noah’s hands. We finally went to day care with mismatched mittens, something no self-respecting parent should allow.

This grated on me for the next 24 hours. Finally, on Saturday night, I worked up the courage to get to the bottom of the Mitten Mystery.

First I cleaned the play room, no small task in itself. Beneath the rubble, and in the shoe rack and another old diaper bag, I came up with 21 gloves and mittens which do not have a match.

Α family of four has 21 gloves and mittens with no match? I couldn’t believe it. I even took a picture for proof. (One of the gloves disappeared before I could snap the shutter, which explains why only 20 are pictured.)

My mind reeled. If four people could come up with 21 unmatched mittens, what would a family like the Bennetts of Willow River, or the Loureys of Kerrick, do? We’re talking Guinness Book of World Records here.

So Ι made a few phone calls. First I called Mary Bennett. She and Maurice have 10 children, ranging from Mike, 39, to Joseph, 20.

How did you keep track of their mittens, I asked.

Mrs. Bennett didn’t hesitate over her family secret. Maybe she heard the tremble in my voice “Safety pins were our savior, our salvation,” she answered. “When they took them off, I pinned them together and we hung them to dry, over a chair or something.” She also pinned the mitten to the sleeves of their coats and snowsuits when they were playing.

But she had help. Most of the Bennett mittens were hand-made, either by Mary’s mother, Rose DeRungs, or a kindly neighbor lady, Mary Okronglis. The mittens were distinctive, almost like works of art. That helped keep track of them, Mrs. Bennett said graciously.

“I always had a bunch, five or six, without mates after I sorted,” Mrs. Bennett admitted. “That is something to keep track of the mittens and keep enough dry ones on hand.”

The Mitten Wars aren’t over for Mrs. Bennett. Those 10 children have brought 20 grandchildren, and there’ll be 20 more before the battle ends. That’s OΚ with Mrs. Bennett.

“I still have their mittens in a cardboard box marked ‘Mittens,’ and when the grandchildren come to play, they wear the mittens their moms and dads wore when they were little,” Mrs. Bennett said. That’s a nice thought.

And what about the Lourey clan in Kerrick, Becky and Dal and their 11 kids, from Tim, 25, to Nick, 10?

“Mittens never seemed to drive me crazy,” Becky claimed.

That may be true, but remember, nothing drives Becky crazy, not even Doug Carlson. And Becky handled the challenge of the Mitten Wars the same way she handles her political campaigns. She invented a Mitten Rack. Oliver Wilson, an old Moose Lake welder, transferred the idea to steel. He used heavy pieces of metal, about three feet long, with five-inch hooks welded up and away from this base, about an inch and a half apart. These Lourey Mitten Mounts, all nine feet worth and spray painted tractor orange, line the wall by the woodstove in the basement, waiting for soggy gloves and mitts. Another set of racks away from the stove holds the mittens which are dry and ready for use.

In their prime, each Lourey child had about four pairs of mittens, Becky guessed. “You’d end up with so many mittens,” Becky said. “You can imagine. All 11 were at home at the same time. You could end up with 44 pairs of mittens.”

But a new mitten problem has reared its head. Seems that Dal is now missing a really warm pair of mittens. Becky figures one of those kids home from college for the holidays returned to school with α warm pair of mittens?

That’s something to look forward to. I guess the Mitten Wars never end.

A good snow ~ January 19, 1995

David Heiller

It was a good snow, the five inches of snow that fell on January 10. It fell when the temperature was about 30 degrees, so it was wet and stuck to everything.

Usually this kind of snow falls in March, and it stays for a few hours. Then the sun shines and the wind blows and the snow drops in big globs, and by noon it’s back to normal.

But after last week’s snow, the temperature dropped, and wind stayed away, and the snow stuck like frosting onto every twig and branch for four days. It looked like God had reached down with a big can of whipped cream, and got a little carried away. This snow belonged on a Christmas card by Currier and Ives.

The snow brought snowmobilers to life. You could tell they had been waiting for it for two months. They zipped by on the trails and along the roads. They filled the parking lot of the Embassy Bar and the cash registers of Sturgeon Lake One Stop.

The snow also brought my son and me out to the woods for a 2-1/2 hour hike on Saturday morning. We strapped on snowshoes, and plodded over trails for half a mile.

We saw some interesting things. Noah spotted deer a quarter mile off. Some canine tracks crossed our trail. They looked like a dog, only much bigger. I figured they were from a lone timber wolf.

At one point the tracks came together into short leaps, and intersected with rabbit tracks. The rabbit must have taken refuge in the hollow of a tree; which was littered with its droppings. There was no sign of fur or blood, so the rabbit must have won.

Our snowy road. Another nice 
snowy walk from the house.

You can piece together lots of animal encounters from tracks in snow. We startled up a ruffed grouse on our way home. Actually, it startled us. I crouched and squirmed through the underbrush to see where the grouse had been. I saw its tracks, and followed them for 15 feet. Then it dawned on me that the grouse hadn’t been in this spot at all. Whatever was making these new tracks must still be nearby. I looked up just in time to see another grouse thunder off.

We didn’t need to see a lot of wildlife though. Mostly we marveled at the beauty of the woods, and the snow that clung to everything.

ON SATURDAY NIGHT the waxing moon was two days from full. There was a thin layer of clouds over it, but the snow on the big spruce trees still looked too pretty for words. It reminded me of those glass globes that you shake and snow falls and settles perfectly on the trees and animals inside.

Noah and Malika,
 Miss Emma and David

It was so pretty that I called the kids down from their bedrooms, and asked if they wanted to take a walk. A walk at 9:30 p.m. is a rare occurrence in our house. They said yes.

We went down the road to the culvert. Noah decided it was too spooky and headed home, thinking we would follow. But Mollie held my hand, and we kept walking, and soon Noah rejoined us. Going home alone was spookier than walking with us.

It’s a great sensation, talking and walking on a warm winter night, with a bright sky and snow all around.

As we neared our home, we stopped to admire our old apple tree. Some of its limbs have been sawed off. Others are dead. But every spring it blooms, feeding the honey bees with nectar and feeding our family with a fragrant smell and sight. Every fall it bears many apples.

And on Saturday night, it showed us another beautiful side. Its gnarled branches and fine twigs were black and nearly invisible, but each held a coat of snow. It looked like a work of art done in charcoal and chalk. Only much better The kind you get with a good snow.

Oh, the joy of getting sick ~ January 10, 1991

David Heiller

There’s nothing like being sick to give you a healthy perspective on life. Everywhere you go these days, you find people with colds, flu, upset stomachs, fevers, shaking, aching, coughing, blowing noses that would make Rudolph jealous, they’re so red.

But if you’re like me, you don’t really FEEL for these folks right away. You look at them and say to yourself, “Αw, come on, it can’t be THAT bad.” You know they’re sick, but you think in a righteous tone, “I never get that sick.”

Napping David with Rosie, 2006. He wasn't the most sympathetic guy when others were sick. "Go for a walk, you'll feel better," was his stock line. 
Sometimes he got a taste of it though!

Then one morning your ears start to ring, and your stomach turns inside out, and soon your head feels like a hammer-mill and your tongue feels like a doormat for the Iraqi Army and your chest starts to wheeze like Florian Chmielewski’s accordion.

Then suddenly you understand, because you feel just like those so-called fakers, and on top of your aches and pains, you can add a touch of guilt for doubting them in the first place.

It started at work, first with Sandi, then Arla, then Ardis and Cindy, all with the same flu bug, causing all those symptoms, causing them to walk around on eggshells and stare blankly for a split second when you ask them a question, then groaning an answer.

Only Hazel and I withstood the bug at work. Hazel, age 69, could thank her clean-living life-style and pure Danish bloodlines. And me, a robust 37-year-old male in the prime of life, well, “I never get sick,” I thought, in that same righteous tone.

Then last week, it hit me. First in the lungs, then the head, then the stomach. It hit hard. I lost my appetite, dropped five pounds in a day. I stayed home from work, slept two hours in the afternoon. Normal tasks looked mountainous. Dishes stacked up on the counter, left entirely for Cindy. Carrying in wood took my breath away. The outhouse seemed miles away. I couldn’t even read bedtime stories to the kids.

Arla called from work on Friday afternoon, at the peak of this misery, and we groaned at each other. She said she was going home to bed, and I said “Good,” and for once I understood how she felt, because I felt the same way. It’s amazing what a little illness will do fοr your empathy.

It’s funny too, that just when you think you’ll never start feeling better, you notice you are feeling better. It doesn’t happen with the snap of a finger. First it’s the head, not pounding so hard. You, don’t feel dizzy when you rise from the chair. Loud noises don’t hurt your ears as much. You even put away the plastic bucket that has stayed by your side for the past day. You eat supper with the rest of the family, and eye that bottle of beer in the fridge with a renewed look, and even think about making some popcorn before you go to bed.

And you learn the kindness and beneficence of St. Francis of Assisi. When your five-year-old daughter comes into your bedroom and tickles your feet as you try to nap—Tickle-Tickle-Tickle—you refrain from tossing her into a snow bank. When you see the house in chaos, you start the vacuum cleaner, and sweep the floor, and wash the dishes.

And when the sun rises to an incredible 15 degrees ABOVE zero, you strap the skis on the kids and yourself, and take a jaunt into the woods, and breathe in a few deep breaths, and wonder how you could ever have slept through all this warmth and sunshine and beauty.

Yup, there’s nothing like being sick to give you a new outlook on a healthy life.

Testing the dinosaur theories ~ January 7, 1988

David Heiller

Warning: This column contains graphic language about cold weather, bodily functions, and outhouses. Parental discretion is advised.

Those words of caution are issued for my mother, who became so disgusted with my last outhouse column that she couldn’t finish reading it. She stopped just short of flushing it down her indoor model.

Noah and Joe were always busy figuring out the world as they knew it. I am sure that deep discussions on the dinosaur theories were always bubbling with these two.

The outside thermometer read 17-below zero as I headed for the outhouse, in a quick step, Monday morning. That may be balmy for Nickerson folks, but for me, it’s getting cold. Heading for the outhouse, it’s downright arctic.

My grandmother once said they used to put rabbit skins down on the outhouse opening mornings like this. I use a piece of styrofoam made for this very purpose. It^’s quite comfortable if you don’t mind my saying so, especially with long-johns pulled high.

Remember Mom, I warned you about this column.

So in relative comfort on Monday morning, I had a few minutes to look back on the past weekend.

Yes, cold is relative. Sunday, visiting some friends, we spent several hours in below zero weather, skiing and pulling our kids on sleds. I hooked a long rope onto their red plastic sled, and tied it to a pack on my back. We circled through the yard, over the new septic drain field, down under the clothes line, up around the back of the house, then quickly down the driveway to where we started. The last leg was so slick and easy that I would ask Noah and Joey, “Do you want to go again? Are you cold yet?”

“No,” they would answer. “Let’s go again!”

Our intrepid explorers and dinosaur theorists:
Noah and Joey, 1986.

The cold weather brought out the dinosaur theories according to two four-year-old experts. I’m not kidding, four-year-olds are experts in this the Year of the Dinosaur. They can name their lizards faster than Shari Jensen can sew them.

“Where do grizzly bears live, Daddy?” Noah started as they rested me during my workout.

“Out in the mountains, out West, and in Alaska, “I answered.

“There aren’t any grizzly bears,” Joey contended.

“Yes there are,” Noah replied in a defensive tone. No grizzlies?! Noah worships grizzly bears. They are the meanest animals, he thinks, since Tyrannosaurus Rex took his swan dive into the Pleistocene.

“There aren’t any grizzly bears,” Joey kept on. “Yes there are, aren’t there, Daddy?”

Their workhorse was suddenly an animal expert.

“Yes there are, but they don’t live around here,” I said in deference to Joey. “So Joey’s right, there aren’t any around here. They live out West.”

“And in Alaska,” Joey added, saving face.

“But dinosaurs are dead, Daddy?” Noah keeps asking that question, making the grizzly earn its keep.

“You know how they died, Joey?” Noah continued. They had spent half the night before in bed, discussing their theories, but neither had sold his notion.

“There were big ball-canoes [Ball-Kay-Noes], and they blew out all this smoke, and the dinosaurs breathed in this smoke”—Noah drew in a deep breath— “and then they couldn’t breathe because of the ball-canoes and they died.”

“And it was too cold for them,” Joey added. “Yeah,” Noah quickly agreed. “It was too cold and smoky and they died.”

Noah and Joey were always a duo 
from the time they were tiny.

We made a few more turns around the yard, then headed to a state park, until finally the kids looked like their dinosaur heroes and headed inside.

All this flicked through my mind Monday morning, where I sat in 17-below weather. But my reverie shattered when I suddenly realized that there was no toilet paper in the outhouse. I started to swear at my wife, but stopped short. She doesn’t use the outhouse in the winter. “That darn Binti,” I muttered about our dog. Don’t ask me why she would carry away a roll of toilet paper.

An old Sears-Roebuck catalogue would have looked mighty tempting at that point.

Barbie teaches Dad a lesson ~ January 7, 1993

David Heiller

Last Friday Mollie and I sorted through her doll clothes as preparation for an exciting time of “Playing Dolls.”

Don’t ask how my daughter conned me into playing dolls with her. Suffice it to say I made a promise and she held me to it, as seven-year-old girls are wont to do.

Mollie brought out a five gallon bucket full of doll clothes. I allowed as we couldn’t play dolls without sorting through the clothes. So we found another five gallon bucket, and separated the doll clothes into Barbie and non-Barbie piles.

The non-Barbie clothes had a lot of character. Blouses, dresses, caps. Some of them could have fit an infant. Many were home-made by a thoughtful grandma. I liked them. But they were cast aside by Mollie without a glance.

Five Barbies and poor head-less Ken.

We’re into Barbies at our house.

The newer Barbie clothes were just the opposite. They seemed like little more than tiny pieces of cloth with a button here and a fastener there. And I mean tiny. They don’t cover much of Barbie, and there’s a lot of her to cover, if you know what I mean.

All right guys, do I need to spell it out?

Mollie set aside a small Barbie blouse. “That’s Grandma Heiller’s,” she insisted. Don’t ask me how she knew that. It’s the same genetic ability that my wife displays when she tells me what dress she wore to a New Year’s Eve party three years ago.

The underwear on another Barbie, Mollie went on, belonged to Jennifer. Don’t ask me how they got on Mollie’s Barbie. We don’t print that kind of thing in the Askov American.

We found Barbie shoes too, little things that I confess I have vacuumed up a few times. We set them carefully into shoe holders in a plastic Barbie wardrobe. The wardrobe doesn’t stand straight, because it has three broken legs. Mollie told me that it was Mom’s when she was a girl. I didn’t know that.

Mixed in with the newer Barbie clothes were older things, gowns and dresses, yellow with age and use, a bit tattered and torn. Mollie informed me that those were Mom’s when she was a girl. I didn’t know that either. I’d seen them in Mollie’s room, but I’d never really looked at them, held them up close, like a seven-year-old does, like we did last Friday morning. It was kind of fun. I could picture Cindy doing that 28 years ago.

Back then, I wouldn’t give Barbie the time of day, or any other girl for that matter, including Cindy. Things are different now.

Grandma Olson working with Malika on paper dolls.
She had fun with Grandma,
but paper dolls were NOT Barbie.

I’m NOT a big Barbie fan. We’ve never even bought Mollie one. That too-perfect figure and beautiful hair get on my nerves just like a grown woman with a too-perfect figure and beautiful hair makes me a bit uncomfortable. I equate them both with vanity and materialism and other qualities that I can’t express but know I don’t like.

Cindy feels the same way. Yet she had Barbies and wardrobes and doll houses as a kid, and she turned out all right. So I watch Mollie play for hours with her Barbies, and I guess it’s OK. As if that matters.

AFTER WE WERE DONE sorting the clothes, the phone rang. I was saved by the bell. Mollie was invited to Kate’s house, and I wiggled out of my doll-playing promise.

When we were safely in the car, I asked Mollie how many Barbies she had. Six, she said. There’s the short Barbie, and the bald Barbie, and the one with dog bites on her stomach, and the one wearing Jennifer’s underwear, and Ken, whose head has come off. Poor Ken. The schmuck always gets lumped in with the women. I bet he doesn’t go ice fishing either.

Kate's fav!

“What about the roller blade Barbie?” I asked. She had just received it as a gift from her babysitter.

“Seven!” Mollie said happily. “I’m on a roll.”

When we arrived at our destination, Mollie and her friend started playing with a table full of ponies, purple with pink manes, or pink with purple tails.

I couldn’t get Barbie out of my mind, so I asked Kate how many Barbies she had.

“Three,” she said.

“Is that all?” I asked thoughtlessly. Kate gave me a forgiving look.

“But I’ve got 37 ponies,” she said proudly. That’s a story for another time.

Ice storm was a step back in time ~ January 5, 2005

David Heiller

When it comes to good timing, the ice storm had it down perfectly.

Still, it was a sobering couple of days this past Saturday and Sunday.

The ice started forming on Saturday morning, New Year’s Day. That’s what I mean about perfect timing. Whο goes anywhere on New Year’s Day?

At first it was snow, huge flakes. But that changed to freezing rain by noon. I called Cindy at work at about 3 p.m., and she was ready to head out the door, thanks to some thoughtful co-workers at Casual Corner in La Crosse. She got home by 4 p.m. after a very cautious drive.

Ice built up slowly the rest of the day from sporadic spurts of sleet. It hit harder at about 9:30 p.m. I started to say to Cindy, “This weather is really getting”—then boom, a crack of thunder sounded.

“What did you say?” Cindy shouted from upstairs.

“God just finished the sentence for me,” I replied. Thunder on New Year’s Day? Very strange.

By Sunday morning it was ugly. Half an inch of ice covered everything. Our dog Riley jumped off the porch and fell down.

My daughter Malίka and I took a walk down the road. She was anxious to return to college in St. Peter, Minnesota. But we realized that would not happen soon. Hillside Road was a river of ice, impossible to drive on. We could barely stand up on it. Malika fell down near the crest of the road and slid about 20 feet, the three dogs barking and sliding with her.

Mother nature painted some beautiful scenes
during an ice storm on January 1, 2005

It was pretty, as all ice storms are. Sights like the picture that accompanies this column were everywhere. Mother Nature was wearing her good jewelry.

No cars went by the house at all on Sunday. It was like we had stepped back in time about 70 years. I half-expected to see the Heiller family hike up from the valley.

In the early afternoon, I called Eldor Wunnecka to see if a sander was coming. The township truck had tipped over, he informed me. When a sanding truck tips over, you know it’s slippery.

Malika paced the floor as the day progressed. The timing of the storm wasn’t perfect for everyone. I would have felt the same way if it had hit a day later when we were putting the newspaper to bed.

But it could have been worse, Mom reminded me during a phone call that day. Power lines had weathered the ice. No one had lost electricity, not a lot of stuff had broken.

Mother Nature was toying with us, in a sense. Testing our patience. Reminding us what real power is.

And to put it in perspective, we need only look to the tragedy of the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean on December 26 to realize what a real force of nature looks like. We had better not complain too loudly about a little ice.

It gave us a chance to worry and wonder, to play music and listen to the Vikings, to work on a jigsaw puzzle and read a book. That’s not a bad consequence to anything.

At 6 p.m. the Brownsville Township sander roared by. I was standing alongside the road by then, because I had heard it coming. My grin must have blinded the driver. I was relieved! Gregory Guillien turned the truck around just south of our house, then pulled over to see who the idiot was by the side of that road.

It was a bad storm, Greg said, second worst he had ever seen. Taking four times the sand to make the roads safe, and the ice was going to be with us all winter. Snow falls on it; it’s going to be slippery. Drivers of sanding trucks know those kinds of things.

I gave him a heartfelt thank you. The road was open. We were back in touch with civilization. At least until next time, which can wait a year or two.